Back-to-School Dinner Tradition: Mystery Dinner
When my husband was growing up, his family would do an annual mystery dinner. If you have never done one before, the idea is essentially that you are given a menu. On this menu are random items that are not food. For example, maybe the menu would contain a plunger, a blanket, and a book. But each item represents a real food. Like a banana, a hot dog, and a carrot respectively. But those ordering from the menu do not know what pictures represent what food. They don’t even know what foods are being prepared that day!
The key to this is to keep it simple. As a mom, I know for a fact that no one wants to cook 3 separate meals. This year, I stuck with simple foods that could be thrown in the air fryer or just eaten cold. You can find the menu that we used this year below. Each box was associated with the corresponding picture location on the menu printed for the kids. I gave the kids each their own menu with pictures and a pen to circle one thing from each category that they wanted to order. I printed one key for myself to use. When they turned in their sheets, I marked initials next to each thing that was ordered on my key page.
When my husband did these growing up, they did not know what category they were ordering from. That could be fun too! My kids value a little more stability in their lives and since this was the first year of us starting this tradition, I didn’t want to overwhelm them if they happened to only pick vegetables for their meal. But as you can see, I was able to throw the chicken nuggets and corn dogs into the air fryer at the same time while I boiled a small pot of noodles on the stove. It was fairly simple and did not feel like much more work than I normally do for meals.
Another tip I would add is to have the kids fill out their menus about an hour before dinner time. This gives you time to prep what was actually ordered. In our case, no one picked peanut butter sandwiches, so it was nice to not make food that no one actually ordered. Once everyone had finished the food that they ordered from the mystery menu (I gave them very small portions in case they happened to order something they didn’t love), they were allowed to have seconds of whatever was left over.
One other fun twist we did was to have the kids order their plates, utensils, and cups. I did not make a key for this, but you could! The pop it was a plate, the dino: a napkin, the pillow: a cup, the spinner: a fork, and the backpack: a spoon. The kids thought it was hilarious that Reagan and I didn’t get our food on a plate and that Jacob didn’t have a cup for the chocolate milk he ordered. It was just poured directly into his mouth!
This meal makes for an opportunity to have a lot of fun memories and moments with each other before the school year starts. My kids have already told all of their friends about it and have asked if we can do it again soon. I will attach the picture menu below as well as a blank answer key that you can fill in with whatever you want to include in your mystery dinner! I hope it is as fun for you as it was for us!
